


Are you out there -

by RedemptionByFire (steelneena)



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Canon Compliant through Season 3, Gen, POV First Person, Season 3 Spoilers, Sort Of, but not really, even though it doesn't seem like it, my catharsis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-26 05:41:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12052497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelneena/pseuds/RedemptionByFire
Summary: Dale's absence is considered by someone to whom he is very important.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Lissie's Wild West as heard in the Roadhouse
> 
> This is a totally canon compliant fic through season 3 even if it doesn't seem like it.  
> Was a oneshot - now is a complete 4 part story. 
> 
> As always, thanks so much to Lynzee005, for everything. You are my the Gaiman to my Prachett. Or the Prachett to my Gaiman.

On a normal day, Mom picked me up from school at three fifteen and we were home by three thirty or four, depending on if we stopped at the grocery store. At any rate, we were home at three thirty that day when the door buzzed and I went to see who was waiting. Whenever I answered the buzzer, I always did it the exact same way as Mom.

“Who is it?” I asked. The soundbox crackled as the voice filtered through the other end. That sound always gave me a funny feeling in my stomach.

“Hey Art, it’s your Uncle Albert,”

“Uncle Albert!” My “Uncle” Albert didn’t come around very often, not unless it was for a holiday. He wasn’t really my uncle at all, but he was my godfather. Uncle Albert was the only person who ever called me Art. No one else did. Not anyone in my class, or my teachers, and especially not mom. Mom only ever called me Arthur. She said it in a particular way too, and I liked that a lot. Like it was special just for me.

I pressed the buzzer to let Uncle Albert in and then waited by the door for him. After a few minutes that seemed to take much longer than they should have, he rapped twice and I flung the door open. “Hi Uncle Albert!”

“Hey kiddo,” He said with what my mom called his ‘smiling face’ and ruffled my hair. Uncle Albert didn’t smile like normal people when he was happy. His lips made a thin line on his face that sort of twitched up on the sides sometimes. Mom said that was as close to smiling as Uncle Albert ever got. “Where’s your mom?”

“Kitchen,” I said, trying to keep up as he walked into the living room.

“Mrs. Cooper,” Uncle Albert called out, and Mom poked her head out around the doorway. Uncle Albert never, ever called my mom anything else. And if he didn’t call her Mrs. Cooper, he just avoided saying her name altogether. I thought it was weird, because my friends parents called my mom by her name, and so did most of the other adults who weren’t my teachers. But to Uncle Albert she was always Mrs. Cooper. “Have you got a minute?”

Mom’s face got dark, like it did when she was thinking really deeply sometimes when I went into the study for something while she was working. Suddenly, this visit wasn’t seeming like it was going to be much fun anymore.

“Hello Albert,” Mom was drying her hands off on a towel. “Head into the study. We can talk in there,”

I knew what this meant. Mom would tell me to go play in my room, which was on the other side of the apartment from her study. I wasn’t supposed to hear whatever it was they were talking about. Mom did that with her adult friends sometimes, but usually it was because of work. I’d never seen it happen with Uncle Albert before. Mom threw me a look after she adjusted something in the kitchen and I made for my room, but kept the door open a crack so that I could see when she followed Uncle Albert and closed the door. Quietly but quickly as I could I made my way to the door of her study. I grabbed my empty water glass from the night before and pressed it to the door and put my ear to the glass. The soft voices were suddenly a lot more clear.

"- want Albert?”

“This is serious, Audrey. We’ve got a lead on him,”

I took a deep breath when I heard Uncle Albert say my mom’s name. Never, ever, ever had I heard him say it before.

“Is that so?” Mom’s voice sounded weird, like it did when she was really, really steamed with me, but quieter. Colder.

“Gordon and I were wondering if you-“

“No. I’m not taking Arthur out of school and going on some wild goose chase. We are staying right here and if you have anything more interesting to report you can give me a call on the phone, like normal people,”

I pictured mom in my mind. I couldn’t see her sitting behind the desk, so I saw her standing instead, hands on the back of the chair, looking at Uncle Albert really hard like she did at the history teacher last year when he said something rude about Daddy.

“Aud, please,”

Now I was really confused. Mom had a nickname?

“Albert, nothing is stopping you from doing what you will, what you have to. What you would do even if he weren’t your best friend. But I don’t want anything to do with it. If…if you find something, if you really, _really_ find something, then…”

“Audrey, he’s your husband. He’s Arthur’s father. Won’t you even consider it?”

“No,”

“I told Gordon it would go down this way. He didn’t believe me,”

“Of course he wouldn’t. He’s Gordon. Albert, you’ve always understood my reasoning before, you have always listened to my requests. Why can’t you do so now?”

“Because,” Uncle Albert sighed loudly. “Because if there is even the slightest chance that Art can know his dad, then I’m going to chase it and I thought you would have too,”

Daddy’s name was Dale Bartholomew Cooper. We shared a middle name as well as our last name. Arthur Bartholomew Cooper. Mom talked about him sometimes but I really learned all of what I knew from Uncle Albert and Gramps Cooper. No one had ever really told me what happened to Daddy, because, Uncle Albert once told me, no one really knew where he was or what had happened. When he told me that, he’d also made me promise never to tell my Mom that he’d said anything. What I found out was that Mom, Daddy and I had been visiting Mom’s parents in her hometown of Twin Peaks, Washington. While we were there, Daddy disappeared and no one ever saw him again.

I got the feeling that Uncle Albert knew more than he was saying but Uncle Albert also was Special Agent Albert, so I knew that there were things that he wasn’t allowed to tell me by the Government. I never really understood why he would tell me things that Mom didn’t want me to know, but wouldn’t tell me things that the Government didn’t want anyone to know. Mom was scarier than the Government after all. When I asked him that the one time, he even laughed! Then, he said that he “privately agreed with me” but that I still couldn’t know.

“A long time ago, when Arthur was a baby, I told Dale to stop making promises that he couldn’t keep. Things…things were happening that we didn’t tell you about Albert. You remember the circumstances of the night of Miss Twin Peaks…”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t soon forget that. You and Dale getting caught by your Dad like a couple of randy teenagers,”

I didn’t understand any of what Uncle Albert was saying, but I kept listening anyways.

“Do you remember what he told you when you asked why he’d been there, instead of on the stakeout with the rest of the Sherriff’s department looking for Windom Earle?”

“Just that he’d had a dream the day before. A waking dream. But he couldn’t remember what had happened, only that he felt a sense of dread, and impending doom, and something about a desperate and sudden need to find you that he couldn’t remember where it came from. He called Gordon and Major Briggs that night, and told them that he’d ‘been warned’ against going after ‘her’. Gordon never elaborated,”

Uncle Albert wasn’t making any sense but I was eating up his words, desperate to hear more.

“What’s any of that got to do with when Art was a baby? He wasn’t born for another two years,”

“When I was pregnant, I started having…these flashes of something. I don’t know, it’s hard to describe. I tried to tell Dale but he just kept _promising_.”

Mom spat the word like I spat my toothpaste in the sink every night before bed. Mom was always telling me that people shouldn’t make promises that they couldn’t keep and I _always_ knew she was thinking about Daddy a lot when she said it.

“I’ll never forgive myself for agreeing to go back. I should have known. I should have known that nothing would be different, that if we went back he’d forget the warnings, and just…” The sentence ended without ending and Mom made an awful sound and I had to put my free hand over my mouth to keep quiet. Mom never cried except at sad songs and sometimes books. And once, I thought I remembered her coming into my room at night and brushing the hair out of my eyes. I peeked a look because she thought I was still sleeping and I knew she was crying. But I’d never heard her make a sound like that before.

“Dale made his own choices, Audrey. It’s not your fault,”

“But it is, _it is_ , I should have insisted that my parent’s come here to visit. But he was _so sure_ that it would be okay…”

“Audrey, you’ve got a chance here. Come with us, for Art’s sake. He deserves to get his Dad back,”

“Dale’s been gone so long, I’m not even sure that Arthur misses him at all, Albert. And I wouldn’t blame him. You can’t miss something you never really had, something you can hardly remember,” There was a long pause, and it felt like everyone was holding their breaths. I realized then that I actually was holding my breath and let it out really slowly and quietly.

“I won’t press you, then. If we find something, we’ll let you know,”

“Thank you, Albert. I know I must not seem like I’m grateful much of the time, but I am. Be careful out there, you’re irreplaceable to Arthur and I couldn’t bear it if this thing got another one of you. First Gordon’s partner, then that other younger agent, and finally Dale…”

“We don’t know what happened to Jeffries and Desmond. Dale’s a different story…”

“Not really,”

“We tracked him to the same location we tracked Earle to all those years before. That’s more than we were ever able to account for with the other two. We’ll get him back. I really believe we can, Aud. Gordon’s hopeful,”

“Where are you heading?”

“South Dakota. We’ll let you know what happens,”

I sensed that things were wrapping up so I put the glass back and went to my room, puzzling over everything I’d learned. Mom was right. Daddy was hard to pin down in my head. I’d seen lots of pictures of him, but he didn’t like to stay in my brain. I’d be at school and I’d forget if he always wore glasses or just sometimes. And even though I’d been able to listen to a couple of his tapes, I couldn’t imagine him talking to me, or even saying my name. If he was out there somewhere, why didn’t he come home? Where had he been? Why did he leave in the first place? Nothing made much sense. I’d always sort of thought about Daddy like he was on a special mission that no one could know about. Uncle Albert and the T.V. shows called it being ‘under cover’, and I’d figured he’d just always be on the mission. I’d never thought about the fact that someday he might come home. Now, though, it didn’t seem like he was under cover at all. And while Mom was sad and upset with him, I knew she still loved him. I wasn’t so sure how I felt about Daddy, if he’d just left. But Uncle Albert hadn’t even really said that. They didn’t know what had happened.

When I’d waited long enough that I could hear Mom talking in the living room about if Uncle Albert would stay for dinner, I left the room, trying to act normal.  He must have agreed because he’d taken a seat in the living room while Mom went back to the kitchen. I hopped upon the couch next to him.

Uncle Albert narrowed his eyes and lowered his eyebrows and looked down his nose at me. “How much did you hear?” He asked in a low voice, pointing at the glass on the table. I screwed up my face and wrinkled my nose. “That much, huh?” He shook his head up and down like he was thinking and one side of his mouth pulled up, but he wasn’t smiling. He reached out a hand and tugged on the collar of my shirt. It was short sleeved and a button up. We’d had presentations in class that day and had to dress nice.

“Art, I want you to make a promise. And it’s one I know you can keep,”

I nodded quickly.

“You don’t ever tell your mother that you heard a word. You don’t say anything to her about your Dad, you don’t go asking any nosy questions until I say it’s okay, you hear me?”

“Yessir,”

The hard look in his eyes went away and they got kind of soft. Sometimes I’d caught Uncle Albert looking at me like that before, but he’d never done it to my face.

“What’s wrong Uncle Albert?”

He kept looking at me like that for a bit before he spoke. “I’ve never seen any pictures of your Dad as a kid, but I sure bet that you look just like him,”

After that he stood up to go help Mom in the kitchen. I swung my legs, letting my heels hit the couch and bounce off over and over again. I closed my eyes and tried to picture Daddy standing in the doorway, smiling at me, saying hi and to come give him a hug, but I couldn’t keep it in my head, no matter how hard I tried, he just slipped away. I pressed my eyes closed more tightly and concentrated real hard, but it was hazy and soon enough Mom was calling me to sit down to dinner and all trace of him was gone in an instant like he’d never existed at all.

 


	2. Chapter 2

As I lay back on my bed, looking at the diploma where Mom and I had hung it across the room I found myself thinking about Dad. Nothing had ever come of that one time that Uncle Albert had come about when I was six, when they thought he was somewhere in South Dakota. But earlier that day, before we left for the ceremony that morning, Mom had fussed a bit over my hair. She didn’t like it when I slicked it back harshly, which I never really realized was because of Dad until I hit my teens.

“Christ you look like Dale,” She said that morning, looking at our reflections in the mirror. She was short compared to me and had been for a long time, but she had a big enough personality to make up for it. Of all the figures of my childhood, Mom definitely dominated it. She ruled over the other adults in our circle with an iron fist when it came to me, curbing Director Cole’s urges to spoil me, and Uncle Albert’s tendency to tell me too much as soon as she became aware that the proclivities existed.

I’d always absently acknowledged that I looked like my Dad. A lot of kids looked like their parents and I hadn’t made a big deal over the man who’d fathered me since I was little, but to Mom, sometimes, it must have seemed like just yesterday that I was a baby and he was there with us. I tried to keep that in mind when she got into a mood, but it wasn’t always easy to remember to regard the shadows of a man of whom I had no recollection. He’d gone missing when I was barely a toddler, and his impact in my life, especially the past several years had been pretty minimal.

“If you don’t want me to put my hair back…”

“No. No, Arthur, it’s fine,”

Mom’s eyes were haunted. In the past two years she’d gotten that look more and more when I dressed up for holidays or some other occasion especially, but I’d never felt bad about it. When I was little, on one of the rare occasions that Mom talked about Dad directly to me, she told me to never, ever feel bad on her behalf. I recalled the incident with an absent humor now, but at the time it had been almost traumatic. I was ten and looking for a tie to wear for a concert and dug out of one Dad’s. When Mom saw it, she’d started to cry, and, kid that I was, I told her that I was sorry I looked so much like him.

She told me to cut the crap, and never her tell her I was sorry about it again, and not to even think it.

I took her at her word and it just became a fact of life.

We’d gone to the ceremony, where Uncle Albert was waiting already to sit with Mom. Gram and Gramps Cooper were flying in late as their first flight had been delayed due to the crew not showing up, of all things. We didn’t have much contact with Mom’s parents. Once in awhile Granddad Ben would send me letters. Actual handwritten letters. I suspected that I would be getting one in the mail any day. But other than that, contact with them had been minimal as long as I could remember. Twin Peaks, Washington, where my Mother had been born, seemed such a long ways away, the curious, mysterious setting of some unknown drama played out a lifetime ago. 

Denise – she refused the title ‘Aunt’ when I was five – came to dinner with us as did Director Cole.

There was a knock on my door, and I looked to see Mom peering in. “What are you hiding in here for?” She asked, following my gaze to the diploma.

“What do you think Dad would say if he were here?” I asked. To her credit, Mom wasn’t shell shocked like I’d figured in my worst case scenario as I had played out the conversation in my head. Considering the fact that I hadn’t asked a “what do you think Dad fill-in-blank-here” question since I was in the single digits, I’d expected her to be taking it a lot worse than she was. Much, much worse.

“I imagine he’d put his hand on your shoulder firmly, look you right in the eyes and say. ‘Well done Art. I’m damn proud of you. Damn proud’.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Now, are you going to join us or not? Gordon brought a pack of PBR, says he wants to have the honor of your first ‘beverage’ as ‘sanctioned under the law for one night only’,”

I turned my gaze from the diploma to Mom. She had the same expectant look on her face as she did when I was little and she was demanding I leave my room to eat dinner. I had never been more grateful for the consistency of Mom’s nature in my life. She was always the reassuring pillar, supporting and chastising me at equal turns.

“I love you,” I told her.

“I love you too,” She responded, a little more patience added to her tone than previously. As we left my room, and I looked around, I noticed that Gram and Gramps were missing from the crowd.

“They went for more ice,” Mom said cryptically, and ushered me over to Uncle Albert, Director Cole and Denise. Director Cole handed me a glass of PBR, which I inwardly cringed at, but it must have showed on my face.

“LOOKS LIKE ARTHUR MIGHT PREFER A FINE GLASS OF BORDEAUX, AUDREY,”

“One beer, one night, that’s what I agreed to. You can bring a Bordeaux as a present at his future wedding, and if you don’t I’ll raid your cellar myself,” Mom replied and I took the proffered beer.

“TO ARTHUR,” Cole said, and they raised their glasses in congratulations with me. Once we’d all sipped, he put the glass down, and raised the volume on his hearing aids. “Now, to business,” He said, looked pointedly at my Mom, who nodded back at him, if reluctantly. “Arthur, you’re about to hear some things that are classified, TOP SECRET, do you understand this?”

I nodded.

“Your Dad’s on the radar again and we’re going after him,” Uncle Albert responded. “Your mom said she found that you’ve been looking into Twin Peaks,” I turned my head sharply towards Mom in surprise. She didn’t even have the gall to look sheepish. “We’re asking you to stay away from this completely. Let the Bureau handle this. It’s a sticky business and complicated, and you’re only going to hear part of it tonight. Do you recall the time I came and spoke privately with your Mom and you listened in?”

A grimace blossomed on my face. “I was six,” I didn’t look at Mom.

“Do you remember any of what you heard?”

“A fair amount,” I replied. The truth was that I’d written it all down as soon as I was able in a code I’d made up that I was no longer sure I could read, I hadn’t looked at it in so long.

“Some things were glossed over that night, and some things I didn’t and still don’t know. Only Director Cole can give you those answers,” Uncle Albert concluded.

“But that won’t be happening this fine evening,” The Deputy Director picked the thread back up. “I am going to play you a recording of a phone call that I received from your father two years before you were born. Everyone present has heard it already, save you,”

Denise knocked back the last of her beer and then removed a recording and playback device from her purse and set it on the counter before pressing play.

_ “Gordon, it’s Coop. Listen Gordon, I’ve just had a waking dream. Unlike any I experienced before. It is fading rather rapidly and I can no longer recall the specifics of what occurred beyond several strong impressions. A sense of dread, so chilling and absolute that I feel physically cold. More precisely, I also feel a measure of impending, personal doom, as if my future will be decided in the coming hours, for good or ill. I believe I spoke with someone. A woman, with whom I was already familiar. That thing we spoke to Major Briggs about has to be tabled for the present, Gordon. I’ve been warned that it wouldn’t be wise to go after ‘her’. You know what I’m talking about and understand that I can’t say more over the phone. I know that another planetary conjuncture won’t occur for several more years and that this is a chance we normally couldn’t afford to miss out on but I am certain that the woman in my dream was more than adamant that I not go tonight. I’ve called Major Briggs and left a phone message as well. I can’t recall anything more than that. It’s slipping through my fingers as swiftly as smoke. So much so that I wonder if it really happened at all. Leave a message for me at the front desk if you need me. There’s something else I have to go do…” _

The device clicked off and the voice of my father echoed only in my head, leaving the room sounding oppressively empty. I hadn’t heard his voice in a long time.

“Two years and some months later your father was back in Twin Peaks with you and your Mom. He didn’t think it would be a problem,” Uncle Albert picked up after a long moment. “There was no planetary conjuncture happening at the time, he didn’t make anything of it and we didn’t either. What we didn’t figure was that it wouldn’t matter,”

I held up my hands to stop the flow of conversation. “Why would a planetary conjuncture matter at all? What’s this got to do with anything? I thought Dad just had a premonition of that girl being kidnapped by his old partner and the two disappearing. Isn’t that the woman he said it wouldn’t be wise to follow?”

“No,” It was Director Cole that spoke. “That’s the classified bit. The planetary conjuncture opened a doorway that we at the Bureau have long been investigating. It was supposed to be closed, but we have since determined that it remained open. As if it were waiting,” He spoke haltingly, dramatically, but with absolute sincerity. “Your Dad went in and we’re not sure if he ever came back out or not,”

Mom flinched in my peripherals.

“Here’s the point, Art,” Uncle Albert hadn’t touched his beer, but he was still holding the glass. “Keep out of it. We will let you and your mother know if anything crops up. We always do,”

“Why today?” I asked. Part of me wished that they would all go away, with their dour looks and their serious eyes. “Why does it even matter? So I looked up a bit about my Mom’s hometown, that doesn’t mean I’m going to go looking for my Dad,” I meant what I said. I hadn’t even considered it. The town itself had more allure than finding Dad, mostly because it was a tangible goal. Dad had been nothing more than a passing phantom my whole life. Making a trip to Twin Peaks was always something I’d considered doing, despite the fact that Mom utterly refused to go back. There couldn’t be any harm in going for a visit with the grandparents I’d met a grand total of once in my whole life, but whose faces I couldn’t remember ever seeing in person.

I heard the telltale clunk of a glass being placed more firmly than completely necessary on the table. Mom.

“I told you. I told you that he didn’t need to know about any of this,” Her voice had the same cold edge I’d never really forgotten from the time that I’d listened in on her conversation with Uncle Albert.

“Audrey,” It still felt strange to hear Uncle Albert use my mother’s given name. “You have to be reasonable about this-“

“The hell I do, Albert!” I sucked in a breath waiting for her to really go off. “You’re doing nothing but stoking flames that have been long out! He doesn’t want to know, and he doesn’t want to go there and that’s for the best and-“

“Hold on,” I interjected. “Just because I don’t want to know about Dad doesn’t mean I don’t want to go visit Granddad,”

Mom’s eyes widened considerably and she appeared lost for words. Madder’an hell, as Uncle Albert would have put it. Uncle Albert looked like he was about to speak, and Director Cole was turning down his hearing aid even more.

“I’m not Dad,” I stated bluntly. “I don’t really even know who he was. But I do want to see Granddad. And the town. I don’t need to go into the woods or anything, I’m not going to go missing, and I’m not looking into Dad’s disappearance. I just want to visit and then come back,”

Denise spoke up for the first time since the conversation started. “Can’t argue with that,” She shrugged and disappeared into the kitchen for presumably more beer. Mom was looking hard at me and Uncle Albert and Director Cole were sharing a sort of silent conversation with looks alone.

“No hiking,” Mom said finally. “And you lock the door at night and have a concierge let you out in the morning,”

“What?” Her last sentence didn’t make any sense, but I wasn’t going to get an answer from her because she’d left for the kitchen too.

“She means that we speculated that your Dad was sleepwalking when he disappeared,” Uncle Albert explained. “He didn’t take a car. He walked. He walked the whole way out to Glastonberry Grove. That’s over seventeen miles not counting the difficult terrain. Whatever happened, we didn’t think he was in his right mind when it happened,”

“I’m not Dad,” I repeated. Uncle Albert just shook his head and left. Deputy Director Cole and I were alone. He gestured for me to come closer and I did so. He turned his hearing aids up another notch.

“Arthur. Your Dad was an exceptional human being. Your mother, who is also an exceptional human being, understands this about your father. She also believes that what happened to him could have been prevented. I don’t share that view. If you go to Twin Peaks, the thing which happened to your Dad is not also going to happen to you. That much I can be certain of,”

He nodded at me as if that was all that needed to be said, though it left me with more questions than answers. Questions I’d long ago decided weren’t worth the answers. I didn’t resent my Dad, not by any means, but when I was younger I couldn’t understand why he’d chose answers over us. One small piece of an answer was enough to satisfy me. Maybe he hadn’t really wanted to leave at all. Mom was all over anyone who said that he’d left us, always correcting them fiercely that he’d disappeared while on a case. I thought for a long time that it had been for my sake, but now I could tell that it had been more for herself, however subconsciously.

“I’m going to Twin Peaks,” I said to Director Cole. Again he nodded, throwing me a thumbs up despite the dire look he wore. Then, he cranked the dial way down on his hearing aids.

“I HOPE YOU HAVE A VERY GOOD TIME. SEND US A POSTCARD VIA THE OFFICE,”

“I will,”

There was a crash in the kitchen after our exchange and some low swearing. The Deputy Director winced a bit. The door opened to the apartment and Gram and Gramps walked in bearing ice. The conversation about my Dad was over, for better or worse.

Hours later when the guests had left and my grandparents were asleep, Mom sat down next to me on the couch. She had spoken very little the rest of the night, claiming she was tired, but I understood that she was worried. Worried for me, and upset about Dad.

“Director Cole told me to send a postcard while I’m there. You know a good place to get one?” I asked, tentative. She sighed and brushed my bangs back.

“The visitor center by the big log. You can’t miss it,” She sighed again, and it was as if her whole body was involved in the movement, in the exhale and inhale. “You really want this don’t you? And it doesn’t have anything to do with your Dad?”

“I promise,”

She looked me hard in the eyes when I said that, but I meant it. It was a promise I could keep. It wasn’t about Dad. It never had been.

“Are you sure you won’t come with me?” I asked her. “I think Granddad would be happy to see you,”

Mom only laughed at that. “No. No, Arthur, I’ll stay here. And you’ll come home at the end of the summer and go to off to college,” The way she uttered it was like a prayer.

“I’m sorry, Mom,”

“Don’t be. Don’t ever be sorry,” She stood, put her hand to my cheek and smiled sadly. “Goodnight baby,”

“Night Mom,”


	3. Chapter 3

The flight into Seattle was boring and I spent the good majority of the plane ride reading the Popular Mechanics magazine’s I’d brought with me. When the plane landed I went straight to the desk to pick up the car mom had rented for me which took all of five minutes, and I paid with the card she’d cosigned on with me before I left. It was a black Lancer. Practical but sporty. Mom had raised an eyebrow at my request but allowed it. Considering that in addition to her income, we received Dad’s pension, we weren’t hurting by any means. I had two bags – my duffel bag with clothes and personal items and the leather satchel that Uncle Albert had gotten me for my eighteenth birthday. Mom called it a man purse and Uncle Albert teased her mercilessly for acting childish.

The road hummed beneath the tires on the car and by the time I was out of the city and on my way, I’d found a comfortable speed and set the cruise. The radio dial called to me, but none of the stations were interesting so I settled on NPR. The segment was on craft breweries in the area, so I listened with only half-hearted interest, considering that the Deputy Director wasn’t around to vouch for me anyhow.

The next segment was political and held my interest until I hit a little town and my stomach grumbled. One thing I’d been told repeatedly about Dad by Mom was the fact that he had an appetite and I’d gotten mine from him. Usually she was grumbling about it right along with my stomach. I ate at a little hole in the wall place called _The Lamplighter Inn_ , paid my bill and made my way to the far corner to use their courtesy phone. I told Mom that I would call Graddad, but I hadn’t said when. I held my quarter and debated. Part of me wondered if I could enter the town totally anonymously but the other half murmured that the moment they saw me, any residents who’d known my parents would know me immediately.

I let the quarter fall, picked up the receiver and dialed the number which was on a paper I fished out of my pocket.

“Hi, this is Arthur Cooper, can I speak to Ben Horne please?”

The concierge put me on hold. There was no exclamation, no irregular notice implied in her tone when I’d said my name.

_“Arthur?”_

It took me a moment to reply; I’d never heard his voice before. “Hi Granddad,”

 _“Arthur, to what pleasure do I owe this call?”_ He sounded formal, but also a bit excited and I felt easier. He was interested in me, interested in knowing me.

“I’m about twenty minutes down the road, at the Lamplighter Inn. I just ate dinner,” I explained, still a bit flustered.

 _“You’re in Washington? Is Your Mother with you?”_ He asked. Granddad called my mom ‘Your Mother’ like it was a title, like it was her name. I grimaced, glad he couldn’t see me over the phone.

“No, Mom’s not with me. It’s just me. Thanks for the letter. I brought my diploma so you could see it,”

_“That’s, that’s…this is unexpected. I’m…thank you for bringing it. What brought this on Arthur?”_

“Call it my post-graduation adventure. It took a bit of doing but I got Mom to agree. Should I head right up to the Great Northern when I get there?”

_“Yes. Would you like to stay in your mothers room, or would you prefer a hotel room?”_

“A hotel room’s fine,” I said. “I…I’m here to see you Granddad, but I kind of want to experience the town without everyone knowing who I am,” Over the phone, Granddad’s scoff sounded more like a cough but I knew what it really was. “Just so that I can try and get a feel for it before people learn my name,”

 _“I understand. I’ll still have a room booked for you. Discretely,”_ It was obvious that he understood, even if he didn’t really like it.

“Alright. I’ll see you soon then,”

_“Yes…soon,”_

I played over the conversation in my head once I was back on the road. I was sure my mother would have hated the very idea, but I could definitely see her in him. In her semiformal way of talking. In the way she always wanted things just so, and manner of asking guests what they desired. She’d grown up his daughter, and definitely living in a hotel, as much as she tried to shun it. I knew Gramps Cooper pretty well, and I could already tell that Granddad Ben wasn’t going to be anything like him.

I sped past the town sign so quickly that I almost missed it in the dark. The shadows on the twin mountains loomed in the twilight, silent goliath sentinels on the monumental pathway to the town of my mother’s birth, my parents first meeting, and my father’s disappearance.

It felt like I’d gone back in time half a century. The diner, which I could see even from two roads over was lit from both outside as well as inside and glowed neon and warm yellow as the sky darkened incrementally around it. I passed the outline of what I assumed was the Giant Log my Mom had mentioned and eventually a gas station that said “Big Ed’s” at the top before winding my way up the road and into the foothills of the mountain. With the windows down I could hear the roar of the falls before I could see the Hotel as it rose up under the shadow of White Tail Mountain. I parked, checked my license plate number in case I needed it for registration, grabbed my bags and walked up to the Hotel that had been Mom’s childhood home.

The lobby was empty except for the concierge. I gave my name, and was handed my paperwork to fill out while she called my Granddad. I’d just handed in the paperwork when he arrived. He was younger by a lot than Gramps Cooper, which I’d logically known, but it hadn’t really hit me until that moment.

“Arthur?” He asked, almost as if he couldn’t believe it.

“That’s me,” I shrugged, best as I could under the weight of my bags. Granddad looked intense, for lack of a better word. He walked over to me and embraced me, bags and all, for a split second before pulling back and tugging on the bottom of his suit coat, and straightening himself.

“Did she give you your keycard?”

“Yep,” I held it up. “I’m all set,”

He nodded curtly. “I’ll show you your room,”

We walked some ways in silence and up a two flights of steps before he spoke to me again. “225. Is that right?”

“Yep,”

He held out his hand for the key, which I gave to him without question. He opened it and held the door for me and switched on the light. The door closed behind us, leaving me a sense of finality that I hadn’t anticipated.

“I’ll let you get settled, but I would like it very much if you would join me in my office to talk,” He asked. It was clear that he wasn’t really sure how to act around me, but I decided that I was here to get to know my family and the town, and no matter what, I was going to make the best of it.

“Sounds great. Just let me get some things squared away here. And I promised Mom that I’d call her when I made it here,”

He stiffened perceptibly at the mention of Mom’s name. “Of course, Arthur,”

“I won’t be long. You can wait if you like, or I can meet you there,”

Granddad hovered for a moment before ultimately deciding to stay put, standing precisely where he was, and clasping his hands behind his back. I threw down my bags in the chair and sat on the bed. The phone was old, but that contributed to the feel of the place, which I’d already decided was a bit North Woodsy for a guy who’d grown up in downtown Philly, but okay for a vacation stay. I dialed the number for home and wasn’t disappointed when, despite the fact that I knew she was anxious, it took Mom five rings to answer.

_“Arthur, baby is that you?”_

“You bet, Mom,”

_“You made it there okay?”_

“Yes Mom, I’m fine. I’m in my room at the hotel. Granddad’s right here in the room with me. I’m great,” She paused half a second longer before answering than normal, but I figured she deserved to know that he was there.

 _“You tell him hello for me then._ Don’t call too often, but please do call,”

I laughed, and Granddad’s head shot up. “I promise mom. No worries. I love you,”

_“I love you, too. Goodnight,”_

“Goodnight,”

I put the receiver down and the phone back on the nightstand. “Mom says hi, by the way. She’s heading to bed. Time difference, you know,” I felt the awkwardness of my position as the bridge between my mother and her father.

“Of course,” Granddad replied.

“She told me not to call too often, but to call all the same, if you wanted to know why I laughed,” I offered, like the dove with an olive branch. I shucked my jacket off too and ran a hand through my hair, mussing it a bit more than I usually liked. If keeping it back made me look more like Dad, it was the last thing I wanted to do here.

Granddad actually smiled at what Mom had said, and I counted it as a win. The silence between us wasn’t as strange as I followed him from my room to his office. When we arrived, he didn’t sit behind the desk, though it looked like he might have liked to, and probably would have felt more comfortable that way. Instead he pulled a second chair from farther out in the room and we both sat in front of the desk, each of us looking at the other like some sort of unknown specimen.

“I want you to know how happy I am to have you here, Arthur,” Granddad’s professional persona was back in place. “I’m not sure what your Mother has all told you about me, but-“

“Nothing. Mom doesn’t tell me anything. She says that we have our life and that’s what matters. If I want answers I get them myself or I don’t get them at all,” I was blunt and he took it in stride.

“I was never the best person, Arthur, much less a good father. I’ve done worse than morally questionable things in my time, but around the time when your mother left, I turned over a new leaf and I haven’t strayed from the line since then. I feel that you deserve this information. Your mother’s lack of desire to associate with me is not entirely unfounded,”

I shrugged, only mildly curious as to what counted as worse than morally questionable before deciding that I would take him at his word.

“I understand,” I replied, and that settled the matter. He asked all manner of questions, from my goals for college – Penn State – and my areas of interest – electrical engineering – before asking about Mom.

“How is she? Your mother?”

“She’s like she always is, I guess,”

“And what’s that like?” It was sad, I decided in that moment, that he couldn’t probably envision my mother as a woman, much less a mother.

“Mom’s great,” I decided to relish a chance to talk about her, rather than mire myself in the sad reason for the conversation. “She’s always been this crazy intense and no-nonsense personality in such a little person. I remember when I was little I thought she was so tall because she was just always took charge of everything wherever she went. I think most of my teachers in middle school cowered when she came to conferences. I played baseball for a season and I think even coach was afraid of her,” I was grinning widely thinking of the first time she met with my coach. “But everyone loves her. She wasn’t the PTA mom or anything,”

“Well. That certainly sounds like Audrey. She was always like that,” The fond quality in his voice made me ache for something I’d never understood. Mom never dated. She said that even if Dad was dead, she wouldn’t have done so, and there’d never been a father figure in my life as a result. Uncle Albert was decidedly nothing like a Dad, which even I had understood right away. But watching my Granddad ask about my Mom was something I’d never seen before, even when Gramps Cooper came up for holidays.

“Well. It’s late, and I think that we’d both perhaps be getting to bed. Tomorrow, I’ll let you be. If you want your grandmother’s address, I’ll write it down for you. Your Uncle Johnny lives there with her. Your Great Uncle Jerry may or may not come through the hotel on any number of occasions so I won’t bother with that,” He moved behind the desk to write on a sheet of Great Northern stationary my grandmother’s number and address, and handed it to me. He nodded to me, wished me goodnight, which I wished back in return, and then I was headed back off to my room.

The next day, I woke rested and nestled comfortably under the covers. The hotel staff, according to Granddad had been made aware that I was a family member and thus not to be charged for anything during my stay, but otherwise wasn’t to be acknowledged, as per my own request. I took breakfast alone in the dining room which was, to my surprise, full of tourist and business guests. Without going back to my room, I left for the parking lot when I was finished and drove down into town. I stopped out of curiosity at the Gas Farm where a man who was presumably Big Ed gassed up my rental without much fuss.  It was a Monday, so once I was down the road a little ways further things were somewhere in the middle between dead and busy, that strange middling range where people walked in singles or pairs down the road and made it look more crowded than it was. I parked the car in a municipal lot and went straight to the visitor center where I bought a postcard and wrote a message to Uncle Albert and Director Cole. At the post office I mailed it immediately before continuing down into the town.

Despite having just eaten only twenty minutes ago, I felt compelled to enter the diner, which was called the Double R. That much I knew from Director Cole, who raved frequently about the quality of the coffee, pie and waitresses, which earned him a groan and a set of rolled eyes if said in the hearing of Uncle Albert.

Like the rest of the town, the diner held that timeless quality about it and I sat at the counter instead of a booth, waiting for a waitress to come by. A blonde woman wearing the teal and white trimmed uniform walked up absently, taking out her pen and a note pad.

“What can I getcha?” She asked.

“Two donuts please, jelly, and a cup of coffee,”

“You got it,” She looked up at me then, after taking down the order slip, paused, looked at me a bit more closely, and shook her head before disappearing. I felt the weight of my father’s life pressing into me. She came back a minute later with the order and then leaned on the edge of the counter.

“Say, what’s your name?” She asked, but the door jingled, distracting her. I stuck the donut in my mouth to get out of answering, but it became obvious that it was an unnecessary precaution. “Oh hey Bobby. Becky’s at school?”

“Yep. Just came in for the usual before work, honey,” The man who had entered wore the uniform of a Sheriff’s deputy.

They kissed briefly over the counter and I was left alone for the moment. I finished the first donut and half the coffee by the time she returned to her husband with four to-go cups of coffee and a box of donuts.

“See you later, Shelly,”

“Love you,”

I wasn’t off the hook, because Shelly turned back towards me. “Sorry. That’s my husband,” She looked at me expectantly.

“I’m Arthur,” I said and took a long sip of the bitter drink, relishing it less than I usually did.

“Arthur. Hm. Well, welcome to Twin Peaks. How long are you going to be here?”

“Just the summer. I drove up from Seattle,” I only half lied. “Having an adventure before I go off to college,”

“Well, that’s nice,” She said sunnily. “I only ask because you look really, really familiar. Your folks aren’t from around here, are they?”

I didn’t want to answer, but I didn’t want to lie. “My mom’s from the area but we haven’t lived in the state for years,”

“Oh? What’s her name?”

She would know the moment I said mom’s name, and I must have looked crestfallen, because a little line appeared just above the bridge of her nose. She had a motherly atmosphere about her, which I suppose made sense because she likely had a daughter named Becky, but it wasn’t the same sort as what Mom had.

“Something wrong Arthur?”

“I was just hoping to experience the town anonymously, I guess,” I decided to be honest. I liked this woman. She looked like she was about Mom’s age and I have never done well lying to Mom about anything.

Her mouth opened forming a silent “Ah,” and she smiled conspiratorially. “Alright. You don’t have to tell me,” Her eyes narrowed. “I think I might already know anyways… But I promise I won’t even ask. Did you get in last night?”

“Yep,” She poured me a refill unasked for. “Anything you suggest I go see?”

“Well, there’s not really a lot to do around here,” Shelly shrugged. “Kind of a boring place to vacation if you ask me, but then I’ve seen the falls a hundred times and hiking isn’t really my thing,”

“I promised my mom I wouldn’t go hiking, so I guess my options are limited,” I offered and she beamed.

“Well, there’s still the falls. And the old mill site, even though the mill burned down a long time ago,” She shuddered, and I wondered why it was such an awful memory.

“I’ll check them both out,” I dug in my wallet for cash enough to pay and tip. “Thanks for the advice,”

“No problem. Have a good day, Arthur. Will we see you for specials at lunchtime? Norma’s got the best turkey sandwiches,”

I assured her I would be back, if not that day, then the next and left the diner. Grandma’s address was in my pocket and I figured I’d make it my next stop. The house was large and modern, but when I rang the doorbell, no one came, so I left feeling somewhat let down and headed back to the hotel. I parked and walked out around back to the falls, where I took in the sight and sound and even the clear scent of my surroundings for a good hour or two, imagining Mom standing where I was, looking out and thinking about homework or something. Mom was hard to imagine as a teenager. I knew she’d only been twenty when she had me, and so her adult life always sort of seemed to overshadow any escapades she’d had as a high schooler. I went back to the car and drove down past the high school, but I didn’t have any interest in going inside. Their last day of school was apparently yet to come and I had no intention of heading back to the same sort of place I’d just left. Instead, I decided to drive aimlessly, and slowly, taking in the sights. Eventually I found myself passing the diner again, and before I knew it, I’d made it to the Sheriff’s station, where Shelly’s husband and all of the people who had known my Dad best in Twin Peaks were working.

If Shelly really knew, I wasn’t certain she wouldn’t tell her husband. And I did want to go in at some point. I parked on the road and sat there for a while, trying to imagine, first, if I managed to keep my identity from everyone in the town for a whole three months, what I would do with my time. I couldn’t come up with much. I liked to read and work things with my hands, but I wasn’t big on writing, or painting or any of the other artsy things people came to places like Twin Peaks to do, and I certainly wasn’t going to lounge around the Hotel the whole time. And hiking was absolutely out of the question. I wouldn’t go back on a promise that I absolutely could keep without any trouble. It meant to much to my Mom.

Undoubtedly my stay would be more interesting if I made myself known. I looked at the car clock. It was 1:30, so I decided to head back to the diner for lunch, resolved that I would confront the Sheriff’s Station the next day, and enjoy one full day on anonymity before I willingly gave it up.

When I sat down in the Double R for the second time that day, I took a booth instead of the counter. In the back corner a woman wearing the waitress uniform and a pair of glasses was looking over some paperwork. She looked up and smiled, but it was at a point past me and from behind me came the man that I had assumed to be Big Ed of Big Ed’s gas farm. He joined her at the booth and she vanished from my sight. Shelly came over to my table to wait on me again.

“Back for that turkey sandwich, Arthur?” She asked jovially.

“Yep. I went to the falls. It was gorgeous. I can see why people come up here all the time,”

“I guess it feels that way to fresh eyes,” She said, jotting down the sandwich order. “Anything else?”

“Just a water, please,”

“You sure you don’t want to try the pie? We’ve got cherry?” It was a leading question, I knew, because one thing Mom had told me was that Dad loved cherry pie. I didn’t.

“Not a big fan. Any other flavors?”

“Huckleberry and peach today,”

“Peach please,”

“Coming right up,”

True to her word, Shelly didn’t press me at all, brought me my food, and thanked me for my patronage when I left. I spent the rest of the day learning the lay of the land by driving purposelessly, and another good hour or two exploring the site of the mill fire, which I found just as unintentionally as I had the Sheriff’s station.

By the time I left it was getting late again, though the sun wasn’t anywhere near descending and I decided to head back to the hotel to have dinner with Granddad who had made a point of telling me when he ate every night, unable to contain the hopeful note in his voice when he did so. He asked me about my day and I told him, then asked him about his and he did likewise. The rest of dinner was a quiet affair but genial and afterwards I went back to my room and picked up the paperback of 1774 I’d bought at the airport back in Philly.

The next morning went the same way as the first except when I made it down to the Double R, a tad earlier than I had the day before, I told Shelly I wanted what her husband usually brought with him to work.

She looked at me slyly. “Gonna reveal yourself, stranger?”

“Something like that,”

“Well, alright. I’ll tell Bobby I had it sent over already today,”

“Thanks,”

I just passed his cruiser as I left with the coffees plus one and a box of donuts sitting in my passenger seat. I parked in the lot at the Station that time, instead of on the road, picked up the coffees and donuts and exited the car, trying to reassure myself of my decision.

I shouldered open both doors and came face to face with another blonde woman, whose hair was in curls and whose desk bore the nameplate LUCY BRENNAN.

“Hi. I’m here to see Sheriff Truman,”

“Hello. May I tell him who is here to see him?”

“Uh, I brought the donuts and coffee,”

Lucy Brennan made a face at me but she pressed the call button and informed Sheriff Truman, in a roundabout manner, of my presence in the building.

“He says to bring it in so he can pay you for Norma,”

I nodded.

“That’s right down the hall there, to the left, and then, you need to take a right, into the conference room, which is the one with two doors. You can go in through either the first one or also the second one, since they both lead to the conference room,”

“Thanks ma’am,”  She nodded with a distinct jut of her chin and I got the feeling that she didn’t quite approve of me. She watched me like a hawk as a rounded the corner, and I saw her leaning back in the chair to catch a glimpse of me as a I passed the door in the hall that lead to her office.

“Bobby couldn’t pick up the coffee today?” A man in a hat asked from where he sat at the conference table. He looked up as he finished asking the question, and immediately his demeanor was altered.

“I just wanted to deliver it personally, Sheriff Truman,” I set down my offerings and put out my hand. “My name is Arthur Cooper, and you knew my parents,”

Sheriff Truman shook my hand firmly, but he looked a bit dazed.

“Cooper?”

“Yes, sir, Arthur Cooper. Dale and Audrey are my parents,”

“Christ,” He uttered and sat back down heavily in his chair.

“Have a coffee,” I pushed the carton towards him and he selected his cup, taking a long draught from it, his eyes never leaving me.

“Sit down, Arthur,” He said after a moment.

I sat, feeling very uncomfortable. Where Granddad was primarily looking for Mom when he looked at me, his gaze missed the weight of expectation. Mom was a known entity. I knew her, how she worked and how she thought. Dad was a different story, and I didn’t like feeling as though I was being weighed and measured against a man whose only importance to me was the fact that, a. My mother loved him and b. he was half of the reason I was alive. To Sheriff Harry S. Truman, it wasn’t me or even my mother who mattered when he looked at me. It was my Dad.

The silence dragged on, and I was beginning to get the feeling that Sheriff Truman wasn’t going to be the talker that Granddad was. “I know I look like him, Sheriff,”

“Yeah, you could say that,”

The conference room door opened before either of us could speak again, and Shelly’s husband, whose name I recalled was Bobby entered. “Shelly said that she sent some kid over with the daily-“ He stopped when he finally took in the scene. Me, sitting ramrod straight in the chair, the donuts and coffee in front of me, Sheriff Truman looking at me like he’d seen a ghost.  Bobby circled the table so that he stood to the side of the Sheriff and looked closely at me.

“Well holy shit. Are you Audrey’s kid?” He asked, much to my surprise. I hadn’t expected anyone at the Sheriff’s station to associate me with my Mom first, but then I remembered that Shelly looked about Mom’s age, and considered that this was in fact _her_ hometown and not Dad’s.

“Yes. Audrey Cooper is my Mom,”

“Christ,” He said, almost identical in tone to the Sheriff. He pulled out a chair. “Well how is she? Audrey-I-get-what-I-want-Horne. Christ. Is she here too?” the Deputy ran a hand through his very silver hair.

“Mom’s great. She’s still back home in Philly, though. I just came for summer break before college,”

“We went to high school together. And I sort of worked for your Grandfather. Ben Horne, you know,”

“Yep,”

The Sheriff was still looking at me, and I let my gaze drift from the Deputy to him, feeling all too aware of myself.

“So she married that Cooper guy?” The Deputy asked, commanding my attention again.

“Yes. You didn’t know?” I was genuinely surprised at his comment. I hadn’t anticipated that there would be people who were unaware that my parents had married.

Sheriff Truman finally spoke. “Deputy Briggs and his wife were on their honeymoon when you and your parents were here last,” Deputy Brigg’s head shot over to the Sheriff, clearly surprised still.

“You never said they were married, or that they’d had a kid,”

“Wasn’t important,” Truman replied. The Deputy shrugged and nodded his head in assent.

“Yeah, I guess there were more important things going on,” Suddenly, the Deputy looked at me with a hit of concern. “No offence,”

“None taken. Dad being missing is just sort of a fact of life for me,” I replied honestly. “I’m not here because of him, or for any particular reason except that I wanted to see the town, and see my grandparents,”

Deputy Briggs was nodding but Sheriff Truman was still looking hard at me. I met his gaze, and found it comparable to trying to meet Mom’s when she was in a mood. I’d had a lot of practice with that, so I held my own.

“I’m not here about him. I’m really not,”

“He went missing out near Glastonberry Grove,” The Sheriff was watching me closely, waiting to see my reaction.

“I know. I promised Mom I wouldn’t go hiking though,”

Deputy Briggs laughed genuinely, even though it retained a hit of unease. I could tell that he was feeling similarly to myself. This meeting wasn’t what I had anticipated, but then, I wasn’t really sure to expect from the man who’d been a good friend of my father’s.

“Fair enough,” He said after a moment, and stopped staring at me ceaselessly to take a drink of his coffee and crack open the box of donuts. “Bobby, you go get Andy, Hawk and Lucy. Let ‘em know,”

“Gotcha, Sheriff,” With a youthful energy I wouldn’t have expected from a man with such a shock of silver hair, the Deputy sprung from his chair and fairly flew from to room.

“I mean no disrespect, Sheriff,”

“I know, Arthur,”

Deputy Briggs returned in that moment, bringing with him two other deputies.

“Oh my goodness it’s Agent Cooper!”

“His son, Andy, that’s his son,” The other man, a Native American deputy I assumed to be Hawk. He’d been mentioned more than once with great fondness by both Uncle Albert and my mother. Uncle Albert had a number of things to say about Sheriff Truman, but I’d always gotten the feeling that he was rather fond of everyone in the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department as a rule.

“Oh. Ohhhh. Right,”

“I thought he looked very familiar,” Lucy Brennan brought up the rear, and she watched me sweetly. Hawk put out his hand.

“It’s good to meet you, son,” He said as we shook.

“Likewise, sir,”

“He has good manners, this one. I don’t suppose he learned them from his mother,”

Deputy Briggs snickered. Truman sipped his coffee. Hawk made to take a seat.

“I have to go back to the front desk now,” Lucy announced to a chorus of ‘okay Lucy’s. When Lucy was gone and everyone was seated around the table, it was Hawk who spoke.

“How did you come to find yourself here, Arthur?”

I tried to pretend that Hawk was the only person there without being rude to the others, simply because it made me feel better. I didn’t feel the weight of expectation from him, or, to a lesser extent from Deputy Briggs. Deputy Brennan’s automatic assumption that I was my father bothered me more than I let on. As a child, the comparison had brought me infinite pride and joy. I wanted to be like him, until I discovered that he and I had very little in common despite our looks. Everything I heard about Dad from Uncle Albert painted a picture of a man who was caught up in his job, but also endlessly optimistic. Mom’s overt influence had left me firmly entrenched in the realism camp and exceedingly optimistic people had a tendency to wear on me. Both Mom and Dad believed all sorts of mystical nonsense, which seemed to be a belief that Director Cole and Uncle Albert shared, but one that just didn’t fit the world as I’d experienced it. I liked to know how things worked, but the mysteries of the universe I just allowed to pass through me. I couldn’t understand them if I tried and had no intention of reasoning with them.

I spoke until Hawk ran out of questions. Occasionally Deputy Briggs interjected but both Truman and Brennan listened silently for the most part as I answered questions about my life and my mother and even Uncle Albert and Director Cole, the mention of whose name brought a scowl to Deputy Briggs face.

“Bobby’s wife kissed Director Cole once,” Truman said by way of explanation with the hint of a smile. In this only did he momentarily remind me of Uncle Albert. I had the feeling that under normal circumstances, Sheriff Truman would smile much more readily than he was currently prone to doing. “I believe I remember him saying that Shelly was the only voice he could hear sans hearing aids,”

Deputy Briggs grumbled again when I laughed wholeheartedly at the assertion. “The Director is definitely legally deaf,” I stated through the last echoes of laughter. “He’s constantly fiddling with the thing. It’s always too loud or not loud enough,”

“Must be a pitch thing,” Truman poked humor in Briggs’ direction again and I felt the pressure to be my father lessen just a bit.

Half the day had gone by, by the time that Truman finally looked at his watch. “Well fellas. It’s been a quiet day. How about some lunch?”

I was coerced into joining them, but I insisted on taking my own vehicle, as I still intended to visit my Grandmother and Uncle Johnny after lunch. The diner was busier that day than it had been the day before and when I entered flanked by the four lawmen, I didn’t, surprisingly, feel as self-conscious. Their presence in the diner was second nature to all present and so I discovered that I had the perfect camouflage. After we’d entered I saw that Deputy Briggs had stopped to talk to Shelly, whom I mentally renamed Mrs. Briggs. Discretely she looked in my direction and nodded emphatically. I knew he was confirming her suspicions. I tried to imagine Director Cole kissing Mrs. Briggs but couldn’t picture it.

They walked over together and she looked at me for my order, which I gave easily. “The Usual?” She asked the rest, who all nodded in unison.

I breathed a sigh of relief when she left, afraid that I’d have to face her questions now that I was out in the open, but whatever her husband had said must have done the trick, at least for the time being because I wasn’t required to repeat anything more for the day. They talked genially amongst themselves and only included me occasionally, because it must have been fairly obvious how I was feeling.

I hadn’t wanted this. I wanted the anonymity our absence had brought me but didn’t yet fully regret the way I’d spent the day to that point. When everyone was done eating they each got up and said goodbye. Before he left, Hawk shook my hand again.

“Before you leave, I am going to take you to meet Margaret,” He said, cryptically, and then left. I was alone with Sheriff Truman and feeling vaguely nervous again.

He drained his coffee and stood. I stood with him.

“Well,” He said. I stood by my assertion that he wasn’t much of a talker. “Tomorrow night I’d like you to meet us here. Your father, despite the short time I really knew him, was one of the best friends I ever had. I understand that…that he…because of his absence you view him differently. I don’t mean to put any expectations on you. Just been a long time. A long time…” He got a distant look in his eye, shook my hand firmly, and left.

Mrs. Briggs came up to me then and stood next to me while we watched him get into his SUV and drive away.

“Bobby tells me that you’re Audrey and Agent Cooper’s kid,”

“Did you guess right?”

She just smiled and asked if I wanted a refill, which I declined. I went for my wallet but she stopped me. “Sheriff Truman paid for you. See you tomorrow?”

I nodded and said goodbye vaguely before leaving. I sat in the car for ten minutes, unmoving, then got out and walked down to the bus stop where there was a payphone. Another quarter later and Mom’s phone was ringing again.

_“Hello, this is Audrey Cooper speaking,”_

“Hey Mom,”

_“Hi Arthur. How is everything?”_

“Granddad’s good. I met Deputy and Mrs. Briggs…uh Bobby and Shelly. And Sheriff Truman, Deputy Hawk and Deputy Brennan. And Lucy Brennan,”

_“How’d that go?”_

“Alright, I guess,”

_“You sure you’re okay?”_

“Yeah, Mom. I’m okay. How about you?”

_“I miss you, sweetheart,”_

“I miss you too, Mom,”

Despite my best intentions, I put off seeing my Grandmother and Uncle Johnny again, instead heading to a nearby park where I sat with my book and read for several hours. I headed back to the Great Northern late after walking aimlessly around town and took dinner in the dining room by myself before heading to bed, utterly exhausted despite not feeling like I’d accomplished much.

The next morning, I kept mostly to myself, but I did eat breakfast with my Granddad, who, as always, seemed mildly surprised to see that I was still interested in his company. I found afterword, that despite my promise to my mother, I wanted desperately to do something different, and hiking appeared to be the only thing I hadn’t yet done. So I satisfied myself by driving around the greater Twin Peaks area instead, windows down, taking in the air along the roads as the wound up the foothills of the mountains and deeper into the Ghostwood.

Around noon I came back down to the town, and headed out again towards my Grandmother’s hoping she would be home. When she answered the door, I wasn’t sure what I expected, but it wasn’t her.

My Grandmother looked at me unrecognizing. She was a mousy woman, but I could tell that she had once shared my mother’s raven dark hair. Once, twice she blinked owlishly at me. “Can I help you young man?”

“My name is Arthur Cooper, I’m your Grandson,”

She let me in without question, her eyes suddenly searching my face. It was so much easier, again than the day before. She wanted only to know about me. No questions were asked about either of my parents. Briefly she introduced me to my Uncle Johnny, offered me lunch and did little else. It was clear that whatever ire she held for my mother she had no such compunctions against me, and didn’t seem to care at all about my dad. It was pleasant, though boring and I found myself thinking about what was in store for me that night.

When I made ready to leave around three, my grandmother took my hand and looked at me hard as said, “Thank God you’re nothing like your mother,”

I couldn’t say I agreed with her but I smiled, gave her a brief hug and wished her a good day. I felt aimless again, driving in the car, and sincerely began to wonder what I’d been thinking. The town held all the mystery, not my father. Dad was cut and dry - he was gone and it wasn’t likely he’d be back, but the town had always been possible and I’d wanted it bad enough that Mom had let me come. But why? Had she foreseen how I would feel? Did she anticipate that I’d use my return ticket early and just let me get it out of my system?

The open road out in front of me, I seriously considered driving back to Seattle, but rationality - Mom’s ever present grounded rationality, which apparently Grandma Sylvia didn’t know about - forced me to return to the Great Northern where I hid myself until I was about a fifth away from finishing the book.

I had dinner at the Double R and waited, patiently, for the men from the Sheriff’s department to show up. Mrs. Briggs wasn’t there, but the woman I’d seen sitting in the booth and her male friend were. She came up to me, smiling.

“You’re Arthur, right? Shelly told me,” She smiled, pouring me a refill of my coffee.

“Yes Ma’am,”

“I’m Norma. I own the diner. And that’s Ed, over there. Ed Hurley. We both knew your parents,”

The smile I managed wasn’t wide, and again the resounding _You asked for this_ , was playing in my head, in my mother’s voice, on repeat.

“Seem like basically everyone at least knew of them,” I replied, though not unkindly. Norma had sad, understanding eyes, and I instantly liked her better than my Grandmother. She didn’t have to say a word and I knew that she understood how I was feeling.

“Want some pie? I’ve got peach again,”

“That’d be nice, thanks,”

When she came back with my slice, Big Ed Hurley came with her.

“You mind if I join you?” He asked as Norma left to attend another customer.

“Not at all,”

“Harry said we’re taking you to the Bookhouse tonight,” The confusion must have showed on my face because Ed smiled and explained. “It’s a sort of group here in Twin Peaks. Mostly full of people who inherited membership, and you fit that bill. But some people we don’t have join anyways - they’re just not the right sort. You, according to Harry, are the right sort,”

“Was my Dad a member then?” Big Ed didn’t seem like he had any expectations of me, either way. He had a genial nature, just like Norma, and it was comfortable to be around.

“He was, if only briefly. That membership is lifelong no matter where you are, though,”

At that moment the Sheriff, in civvies, and the others came in through to door, asking for coffee’s to-go and heralding their friends and neighbours.

“I see Big Ed’s already got to you,” Truman nodded in recognition. We’ll head out, soon as we get our coffees.

A few minutes later, in the growing dark, I followed in the convoy of vehicles down the road to what turned out to be a literal Bookhouse. I hadn’t anticipated that there would be actual books at the place, and my induction into the group was held without fanfare. In terms of history, I found the origins of the group absolutely fascinating, and was honored to be asked to join as ‘someone who seemed like an upstanding member of society’, as Big Ed put it, in addition to the obvious reason I was being included - my parentage. Although I was made well aware that certain formerly upstanding members had been excised from the group, and others, who’d made a significant change in their lives, had been added. At that, I was surprised to see Deputy Briggs shrug and nod in acknowledgement.

The induction also appeared to have been a good excuse for all of them just to get together and have a good time, as well as, to my chagrin, reminisce. I spent most of the night listening quietly in the corner with a glass of ginger ale until Hawk came over and sat across from me. In the firelight, everyone’s faces had a particular look, one that I couldn’t place, which made me feel at once uneasy and reassured.

Hawk’s face was grave, but he looked at me gently, as if considering his next words carefully.

“Tomorrow, I will take you to see Margaret. I am going to ask her to meet up somewhere, so that you can keep your promise to your mother,”

“Who is Margaret?”

“She carries a log and if you ask it a question, she will convey the answer for you. Margaret will be interested in meeting you, I think,”

“She sounds like an interesting person,” I said honestly. Hawk’s only response was a deep chuckle.

“That she is, that she is,”

Just like he said, we met with Margaret the next day in the park where I had read my book before. She had thinning, grey hair and large, red rimmed glasses that gave her an owlish look. And just as Hawk had described, she carried a log, which she held like a baby.

“Do you have a question for my log Arthur?” Were her first words to me. I had spent the morning determining what, if anything, I would ask the log, considering that I didn’t believe a word of it, despite the overall conviction I found in men I would otherwise consider to be rational minded. My mother, despite all her grounding in practicality, also held certain flights of fancy to be truth, and I mostly indulged her when she insisted on silly things, like, for example, not going hiking.

Despite the fact that Margaret’s gaze was sharp, it wasn’t unkind, so I decided to ask the log my question. I’d spent less time considering it than I had initially thought I would. The voice in my head again suggested that Mom had anticipated all of this somehow, like mothers tend to be able to do, but I dismissed it.

“Should I ask it aloud or should I whisper or?”

“Whatever way you feel comfortable, the log will hear,”

Feeling stupid, but also strangely like I’d entered into a ritual I couldn’t avoid, I bent down and whispered my question.

When I stepped back, Margaret put her ear to the log, and her face underwent such a change of expression, and so genuine that I felt chills. Hawk was standing to the side, looking grave again as he oversaw the interaction.

“Sometimes, one thing can become two,” She began, very carefully, head cocked to the side as if still listening. “And sometimes two things can become one again, which were one to begin with. Marriage is an example of this, but it is not the only example. Of the one thing, which became two, the first part resides within and the second without. But which is which? How can we tell? We often see only what we wish to, and not what is or isn’t really there to see. That is all my log has to say,”

I stared askance.

“Your father learned to appreciate the wisdom of my log too late. Don’t make his mistakes,” She nodded at me and then turned to Hawk. “Thank you, Hawk,”

“You’re welcome, Margaret,”

“Have a nice day, Hawk,”

“You as well, Margaret,”

As she walked away, Hawk turned to me and gestured that I follow him. I did so, and we walked a short distance in companionable silence.

“What did all of that mean?” I asked after a moment.

Hawk shrugged. “Margaret doesn’t interpret answers, she just conveys the information. What it means is for you to discover for yourself. No one else can answer that. Only you know how it applies to your question,”

Despite my initial misgivings towards the entire process, somehow I felt that what I’d learned was significant. If Mom was a rational person, and Hawk and the others, and they could believe in a little bit of Northwood mysticism, I shouldn’t have been afraid to. Even Uncle Albert probably would have put some measure of stock in what was said. For how little he claimed to believe ‘hookum’, I knew, based primarily on things he’d let slip to me over the years, that his facade of scientific skepticism was a well place front for his FBI dealings with the more...unbelievable phenomenon that he could ‘neither confirm nor deny’ to the young child I’d once been, asking about the existence of extraterrestrial life.

I was concerned foremostly with math and science and how things worked. The questions of the universe weren’t important to me. I couldn’t answer them - no one could. Mom’s spirituality was very fluid, and she only asked that I be openminded. I had never promised I would be, but I’d said that I’d try and she was always happy with that answer. Sometimes I’d tried harder than others.

But Margaret’s words resonated with me, even if I couldn’t make head or tails of them in the least.

Back at the hotel, I wrote down what I recalled the gist of the message to be:

_1 from 2 and 2 out of 1. If marriage is an example, that would indicate the joining of two lives into one life. Other examples:_

_The duality of man?_

_If one part resides within and the other without, are these the sides of a person? The side we show the world and who we are inside? Is it a literal statement or a figurative one? Or both?_

_What do I wish to see?_

Underneath, I wrote the question.

_Is Dad out there somewhere still?_

I wondered, first, if the reference to marriage was in regards to my parents, but I decided right away that it didn’t fit and dismissed it. But then, I wondered about what Margaret had said afterword, about my father not heeding the messages soon enough. I had asked, specifically about my father, and the answer I’d gotten was vague. I’d never intended to ask about him. But the relative normalcy which I’d found in my first few days in Twin Peaks had revitalized my interest in him, if only a little. I was both disinterested and intrigued at the same time.

I circled _duality of man_ and then made an arrow and wrote _Dad?_

What was it I wished to see, or not see, about him?

My Mom, and Uncle Albert, and all the others, Truman and Cole, they were all caught up in him somehow, in who he was, or in the mystery of his disappearance.

I flipped the page and wrote at the top _My Thoughts About Dad_.

I stared at it blankly and it blankly stared back.

I put down the pen and grabbed the phone, dialing Mom’s number.

_“Hello, this is Audrey Cooper speaking,”_

“Mom?”

_“Arthur, I thought I told you to call, but not too much. What is it?”_

Her abrasive nature was a boon on me after everything I’d been through the past days.

“I spoke with Margaret Lanterman,”

 _“The Log Lady?”_ There was a humorous edge to her voice and I could picture exactly the light in her eyes. As always, any attempt to imagine Dad was fruitless.

“Yep. The very same,”

_“Did you ask her Log a question?”_

“I did,” I explained what I’d heard and she grew quiet on the other side.

_“You never told me what you asked,”_

“I asked if Dad was really out there somewhere. Still.” She didn’t respond. “I know what you think but-”

_“Arthur, sweetheart, I want you to hear me out. You are under no obligation to love your father,”_

It was my turn to be speechless.

_“I know that you’ve grown up surrounded by people who loved him and admired him, and now you’re meeting people who look at you and all they see is Dale and not Arthur and I know that’s what you’re thinking about. And I know you came to terms with his absence before you even knew what it meant. You loved an idea of your Dad as a kid, but when you got older you had to have realized somewhere along the line that not only do you not really miss him, but you probably don’t really love him either. I can’t blame you for that. How could I? I can’t expect you to love an idea. Or the idea of a memory. You’ve heard every story. Logically you know about him, but you don’t know him and you can’t. But I’m going to tell you. Your Dad was insufferable and impossible and an absolute idiot and he was also kindhearted and optimistic and endlessly curious. And from that, I know, you can’t picture him standing next to you, or talking to you. I can tell you and tell you and tell you and you’re never going to be able to do that. And that’s fine. I’m not asking you to. No one is._

_I don’t expect you to love him, or to think about him every day, or to even wonder what he would think about your graduation. I know you do, sometimes, and less often than you used to, but I don’t expect that of you. No one is holding you to that. And if you felt we were, then it’s we who were at fault and not you. But just because you don’t love him, or even really care about him at all, doesn’t mean you can’t wonder too. You can do both,”_

“Do you think the log message is about him?”

_“Yes,”_

“What do you think it means?” I asked, wondering if she’d do the same thing to me as Hawk had.

_“That we are all two people. And that the only way to be a whole person is to balance to two sides of ourselves. Basic spiritual theory. Gordon mentioned it to me once,”_

“Do you think Dad’s out there?”

_“Maybe he will be. Someday,”_

I didn’t know what she meant, but we said our ‘I love you’s and our goodbyes and I sat down to the list again.

_My Thoughts About Dad_

 

  * __I don’t understand why he’s important subjectively.__


  * _Objectively, I know that he is important on many levels to many people_


  * _Would he approve of my worldview?_


  * _Do I really care?_


  * _Did Dad feel like two people?_


  * _Did he have a dissociative disorder?_


  * _Or is he in a fugue state?_


  * _What would it take for him to return?_


  * _How will I feel if it ever happens?_


  * _How would he feel to know that I don’t love him?_



 

I felt uneasy looking at the last question. Mom had said I was under no obligation, so I felt free enough to admit it, but, seeing the words written there, I wasn’t sure they were true. I still cared enough to wonder, the night of my graduation, what he would say. I’d thought enough during high school that his absence meant that he hadn’t impacted my life, but I knew, even though I tried to ignore it, that by virtue of having the thought at all, I had known all along that, present or not, the very fact that Dad existed had an impact on me.

It was a greater one than I’d been willing to admit. I didn’t hate him - there was no concrete evidence regarding his disappearance - but I didn’t love him either. I was somewhere in the middle, and that was what I hadn’t wanted to see. That was what I was missing. I wished that he wouldn’t affect me, but I wasn’t being honest with myself, and my perception of the world altered as a result. I’d been standoffish to the Sheriff, and to others in town who asked me about Dad. I was justified, certainly, in my annoyance but I was wrong to expect that it wouldn’t happen. That Dad wouldn’t be a part of why I was here. I felt the urge to call Mom again and ask her if that was why she’d let me come, so that I could discover it all for myself, but I didn’t, instead laying back on the bed and looking up at the ceiling, at peace with myself totally for the first time in a long time.


	4. Chapter 4

A crash in the night woke me. I was staying by Mom that night, instead of at my apartment. It was late September and I wasn’t there for any particular reason other than I’d been visiting and it had gotten late. Mom, I knew, could take care of herself (the time our apartment got broken into when I was a freshman flashed through my mind, Mom holding a knife at the thief’s throat, and telling me to call Uncle Albert first and then 911 while she badgered the man into sitting in our coat closet, which she promptly moved the couch in front of while we waited for the police) but that didn’t stop me from flying out of bed.

She was sobbing on the floor around the shattered shards of a whiskey tumbler, the amber liquid translucent against the wood floor.

“Mom?” I asked, reaching for her shoulder gently. She flinched, and looked at me with eyes that belayed no level of recognition. A thrill of fear shot through me, and I quickly backed away. “Mom, it’s Arthur,”

She was shuddering even though the sobs had stopped, shaking with what I could only categorize as absolute terror, and I was about the dial Uncle Albert when she surged towards me, grabbing my shirt and shaking me.

“Whose story is it? Whose story is it? Is it the story of the little girl down the lane? Is it? Is it?” Her eyes were glossy and manic and I was starting to shake too. I’d never seen anything like this. It was as if she’d broke from reality. She held my gaze, stock still and frantic, her body vibrating with energy as she trembled.

“Mom?” I felt small and helpless for the first time in a long time. “Mom, it’s Arthur,” I was repeating myself but to no avail, a sure symptom, I knew, of onset insanity. Or, at least in this case, total inability to comprehend what was happening. My heart was racing just as fast as hers probably was, and I felt that she might attack me at any minute. I wondered for half a second what I would do if she did, but then she collapsed, sobbing against me, murmuring my name over and over like a chant. She pulled me to her and we both sank to the floor. Only when she began stroking my hair like she’d done when I was a kid, did I realize that I was crying too.

“What happened?” I asked her, my voice still shaking. She looked at me hard, and then looked at the mess on the floor.

“Let’s clean this up and then I’ll tell you,”

Five minutes of silence later the whiskey and glass shards were gone and we sat on the couch together. She was holding my hand in both of hers, stroking it rhythmically.

“When I was pregnant with you, I experienced frequent déjà vu. It started, I think, when we found out you were a boy and we were having a discussion about baby names. I was convinced, absolutely convinced that I had been pregnant before. Obviously, that couldn’t be true. But I _remembered_ it. The feeling of your first kick...it wasn’t like I was experiencing new things at all. I predicted many of my cravings, my new feelings and habits. I understood my body perfectly, which, for a first time mom, is not usually the case. I could tell the difference between contractions and false labor, which is almost impossible for someone who hasn’t experienced it. I felt like a pro and I didn’t know why. I would have dreams too. I would wake up absolutely hysterical, screaming and crying. Dale tried so hard to keep me calm but I knew I was scaring him too. Eventually the doctors diagnosed me with a nervous condition related to the pregnancy, and said it would go away.

I was in the hospital, in labor, when it was the worst. Any woman will tell you that the pain of having a baby is unforgettable. And I _knew_ . I just _knew_ that I’d had a baby before. I recognized that pain. I don’t remember much after that. They said I blacked out, but Albert told me that officially they said I’d been catatonic. You father was forcibly removed from the room for the rest of the labor. Albert told me that he was unconsolable. No one knew what was happening. Miraculously everything worked out okay. I woke up, you were born, a perfectly healthy baby boy, and they calmed Dale down enough that he could come back into the room with us. I think Albert had them give him a sedative. Once everyone was sure you and I were both okay, the agents at his office ribbed Dale about it endlessly - the Special Agent with the FBI lost his cool when his wife was having a baby. But in all reality it was very serious.

They’d given me some sedatives too, after you were born, to calm me down enough so that I could feed you and care for you properly - they were concerned about my blood pressure, that sort of thing. And Dale told me that while I was drugged up, I said something about being glad that you weren’t Richard. He thought it was a reference to a name we’d discussed. That’s how I figured out when it had started. I never told him, but I always knew that in whatever life that I’d had that other baby, his name had been Richard.

Things were okay after that, for the most part. The déjà vu went away, since my subconscious was apparently reassured that you weren’t Richard, whatever that meant, and life was pretty normal after that. Until my parents invited us out to Twin Peaks. They wanted to meet you, and they wanted us to make the trip. You were old enough. Dale wanted to try it but I was nervous, and the dreams started up again. I could never remember them. Dale said I talked in my sleep, that most of it was nonsensical anyhow. He thought it was a sign of some underlying subconscious element that I needed to make my peace with, and I think he was right. I still don’t know what it is really. Until tonight, I thought it was gone. I haven’t had a dream like that or anything since before he disappeared,”

She stopped talking, and we sat together. I felt the weight of Mom’s sadness descend over me. No one had ever told me about any of it, and I could understand why. My birth had been traumatic for them both, and then, a year and a half later, right after experiencing similar dreams, Mom woke up and Dad was just gone. I tried to imagine what it had been like that day, but I was sure that whatever I came up with couldn’t have been anything near what had really happened.

“I had a dream tonight, Arthur,”

Mom wasn’t looking at me, but at our hands where she held mine. Like she was afraid to look at me.

“I know that everything I dreamed was real. I know because they’re memories. Memories of something that was, but isn’t anymore. But things like that, awful, terrible things that happen to us, they never really go away. The other me, the woman who had a baby named Richard, she remembers, and because she lived it, so did I. Things like that, those awful things that I dreamed. They don’t ever leave you. It’s like a scar on your soul. I’m her, and I’m not her, but it still hurts the same,”

I didn’t believe a word I was hearing, and it must have showed, because Mom was suddenly lifting my chin, so that we could look at eachother full on.

“I’m going to call your Uncle Albert now,” She said, and took the phone from where I’d laid it on the end table.

She still held my hand and I made no move to let go.

_“Audrey it’s christ-o-clock in the morning. What’s going on?”_

“Dale’s in Las Vegas,”

I started, and moved away a bit in shock, but her hand gripped mine tightly.

_“Say what?”_

“Dale is in Las Vegas. He doesn’t remember the warnings. He doesn’t remember the warnings because the woman who gave them to him no longer exists, but she was me and I remember. He’s going to try and go after _her_ . And _her_ , too. He’s going to try and change what shouldn’t be changed, but things are already altered. He won’t remember it,”

 _“Audrey, we were going to call you in the morning._ **_We_ ** _found Dale. He’s in a State Pen in South Dakota, not Las Vegas”_

“One Dale went in and two came out,” The words chilled me to the core. “One left a long time ago, and the other was within until today. The Dale we’re looking for is in Las Vegas,”

_“Fuck, Audrey, what are you saying? We’re on our way to South Dakota right now,”_

“Don’t go. Just get to Las Vegas,”

_“Where in Las Vegas?”_

“A casino,”

_“That’s really fucking helpful,”_

“The Silver Mustang,”

_“And you know this again how?”_

“Albert, you and Gordon listened to every crackpot word Dale uttered if he said it came to him in a dream. Just, for once, please, don’t ask how or why. Just believe me,”

There was a pause during which some muffled conversation occurred, followed by Albert’s voice loudly stating “LAS VEGAS” presumably in contention with Director Cole’s hearing problems.

_“Alright Audrey, we’re headed there now. What about the Dale in South Dakota?”_

“When you find Dale in Vegas, he isn’t going to know what to do. We’ve sped up the timeline and he’ll be lost. Arthur and I are going to catch a plane to Seattle. Meet us in Twin Peaks no matter what he says. Promise me, Albert,”

_“I promise. I’ll tell Gordon. We’ll meet you there,”_

She hung up, and looked at me, but I couldn’t meet her eyes.

“You’re not coming with me, are you?” Mom said knowingly.

I wasn’t sure if what she said surprised me, or not. I hadn’t known what to expect, but when I heard her say that she and I both would be on the plane, headed to Twin Peaks, I knew that I couldn’t go.

“I’ve been trying to figure out my place in all this my whole life. When I was a kid, I thought I was a part of it, and when I was in high school, I thought I had nothing to do with it at all. I’m on the peripherals Mom. It’s a part of me, and I’m a part of it, but I’m not in the middle. I can’t go with you,”

She put a hand to my face, brushed my cheek with her thumb.

“I love you. No matter what. Maybe it’s for the best that you don’t come. Maybe, if you’re still here, he’ll come back,”

In the morning, I drove Mom to the airport, and then headed to work, but my heart wasn’t in it. I wasn’t going to go, but I didn’t want to stay. The world felt wrong, so I buried myself in the work instead, despite the nervousness bubbling inside of me. I didn’t hear anything from Mom, or from Uncle Albert, or anyone else. On the sixth day I was beginning to regret my decision. Worry overcame me, especially regarding Mom. She’d kept so vehemently away from Twin Peaks for so long, and she was _so_ certain that they would find Dad, I didn’t know how she would react if things went sour, and somehow I was certain they would.

My boss pulled me aside and asked if there was something happening in my personal life because it was affecting my work and insisted that I go home. I insisted that I stay, or I was going to go insane. He let me but relegated me to an inane task so that I wouldn’t botch things up to bad in my state. Halfway through the day, he asked me if my Mother was in the hospital or something. My laugh must have sounded miserable because he patted me on the back and told me that if I needed to keep my phone on me for the day, that would be fine. In case the hospital called. I just nodded, and when he left, I debated getting it out and turning it off completely. No one had called me, so I had no reason to believe that they would.

I was in a meeting on the tenth day when my phone rang and my boss dismissed me without pause.

“Mom?”

_“Hi Sweetheart,”_

“Are you okay? Is everything okay?”

_“I’m fine. I promise. You sound frantic. Are you okay?”_

“I’m been worried about you. What’s going on?”

_“Are you at work?”_

“Yes,”

_“I want you to go home. I’ll call you again in twenty minutes, okay?”_

“Okay,” She hung up without saying anything else, and I popped my head in the door of the conference room, told my boss it was an emergency and left. Twenty minutes later I was at my apartment when the phone rang again and this time, when I answered, I was both more and less concerned. “Mom, what the hell?”

_“Calm down. You’re home, right?”_

“Yes. You’ve been gone for ten days. What’s going on,”

_“Well, I’m heading back tomorrow. Will you be at the airport to pick me up or is Albert going to have to give me a ride?”_

“I’m not sure. Can I text you?”

_“That’s fine. Just let me know,”_

“Will you please explain what’s happening? My boss thinks you’re in the hospital or something,”

_“I’m not, but your Dad is. Don’t worry, he’ll be fine. He’s coming back with us tomorrow,”_

My stomach dropped out, but I wasn’t sure if it was the news that he was alive, the news that he was in the hospital or the news that I would be seeing him the next day. It was probably all of them combined.

_“Are you still there?”_

“Yeah,”

_“He’s fine. Don’t worry about it. If you want to know, I’ll tell you, but something tells me that you probably don’t,”_

I made a decision. _“_ Just the overview. Very brief overview,”

 _“Well,”_ She paused, apparently considering her words. _“He had to have surgery to get a bullet removed and the wound stitched up because I shot him at his behest. It’s a long story, but that’s the ‘very brief overview’.”_

“You’re joking,”

_“I’m really not,”_

“I don’t think I can pick you up tomorrow, but I can meet you at the apartment,” I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t anywhere near ready to see him, much less to understand what had happened.

_“That’s fine. I understand. Do you want me to say anything to him?”_

What kind of a question was that? I wondered. “What, like an icebreaker? Christ, Mom,”

_“You sound more and more like Albert every day,”_

“Oh ha ha, very funny. What time tomorrow?”

_“Nine-thirty we’ll be back,”_

I nodded before remembering that she couldn’t see me. “Okay. I...What’s he like? Is he different than you remember? Was he in a fugue?”

 _“No,”_ I wasn’t so sure that she sounded happy about that. _“He’s not any different at all. Or maybe he isn’t, but he will be. It’s complicated,”_

“Alright. Well, say hi to Uncle Albert for me,”

_“Of course. I love you. See you tomorrow,”_

“Love you too, bye Mom,”

I called off of work. Too exhausted to make my own dinner I went down to the corner diner nearby Mom’s apartment. She’d lived in the same place as long as I’d been alive, and Dad had lived there alone before he met her. He’d walked these same streets and sat in the same diner, and when I went in and picked up the menu to look at the options - I knew what I wanted, but I did this anyways, every time - I asked Lou something I’d never asked before.

“Hey Lou, did you know my Dad?”

“Your Dad, Art? Hell, that’s been a while, but yeah, he used to come in for Pie and Coffee. Why?”

“Well, he’s coming home tomorrow. They found him,”

“You’re shitting me,”

“No shitting, Lou, not from me,”

Lou looked at me with wide eyes and scratched the balding patch on his head. “They find people who’ve been missing for twenty-five years? That happens?”

“I guess so. What did you think of him?”

“I didn’t know him very well,”

“That’s fine. I know plenty of people who knew him well. I want your impression of him,”

Lou poured my coffee. “The usual?”

“Yep,”

“Well,” He began, working his way around the counter with my order ticket. “I guess I’d say he was set in his ways. Always ordered the same. A bit like you in that, but not the quite that way. He had a peculiar way of talking sometimes, like he’d always woken up with just enough sleep to start even the gloomiest day cheery. Drove me batshit when he’d walk in from a thunderstorm beaming away like everything was sunshine and roses,”

“And after he married my Mom?”

“Never saw a fella more in love. He was a bit more restrained after that, but you and I both know your Mom,”

Yes, yes I understood perfectly. I smiled at Lou, a real, genuine smile.

“Thanks Lou. Honestly, I think that’s the best description anyone has ever given me of him before,”

“Whatcha going to do when you meet him, Art?”

“I don’t have a clue, Lou, not a clue,”

“If I had whiskey, I’d pour you a shot,”

I laughed again, wryly. “Mom says you always have whiskey on hand,”

“Your mother’s just a troublemaker,” He grumbled back at me, but I was inclined to think that my mother had told me the truth, or he wouldn’t have been so unhappy about it. I had the two fingers of whiskey Lou had offered by myself when I got to Mom’s apartment, where I was going to stay the night. Feeling strange about the whole thing, I decided to open up one of the photo albums that Mom kept but didn’t really look at. When I was little, I didn’t think Mom was a sentimental person, but I knew the difference now between avoidance and lack of sentiment.

Dad was around ten years older than me in most of the pictures, but they looked old, as if they’d been taken in the fifties, considering the way that he wore his hair, and the suit and tie. My parents had been married in a courthouse within a month of his proposal to her. Uncle Albert joked that it had been because she was pregnant with me already, but considering I hadn’t been born for another year and a half, I knew he was pulling my leg from the get go.

Something had changed in my Dad, he said. Something changed and so suddenly, that within two months of my Mom moving in with him they were engaged and that made for a total of 4 months knowing one another, three months living together and one month engaged before their wedding day. If he and Mom had one thing in common it was that they knew what they wanted and needed and went for it.

He smiled out at me from the picture, his arm around my mother’s waist, and I wondered if it would be the same man, really and truly, smiling back at me when I answered the door at midmorning the next day. Would he be the same, as Mom had claimed, as Lou and Sheriff Truman and Uncle Albert and all the rest had described him? Or would he be a stranger in his own life?

Either way, he would be a stranger to me.

I flipped through the album until I got to pictures Dad had taken of mom while she was pregnant, which Mom never really let me look at because she didn’t like them. One page, as I turned it, was thicker than the rest, and I opened the sleeve and looked inside.

It was one of Dad’s old tapes. Mom kept the recorder in her study, so I pilfered it from the drawer and popped the tape in.

_“It’s October, the 18th, 1991, 1:20 A.M. Audrey is sleeping, but I can’t. Today was the ultrasound. It’s a boy.”_

The tape spooled out for half a minute, and I knew that that was the only thing he’d ever recorded on it. His tone left me feeling bitter. He’d sounded overjoyed, absolutely overjoyed. What a pity, I thought, that that young father-to-be had a whole life ahead of him and he’d missed out on it. He’d missed my life, and Mom’s life, and everything just kept going without him. I hoped for his sake he wasn’t the same person as when he left, because I couldn’t imagine the man whose voice I’d just heard proclaiming his baby was a boy, coming home and looking at me and recognizing his son. I took the tape out, put the recorder back, and slide the tape into the sleeve of the album again. I shelved the album, but looked at the binding, stark white against all of Mom’s black bound book covers for a long time, sipping my whiskey.

If the same man walked in that door tomorrow, he was in for a rude awakening.

Morning came, but I wasn’t hungry. I brewed coffee for one and downed it quickly to quell the mild headache, which presented only half from the alcohol and half from the anticipation of the day’s events. I was dressed and showered and ready for the day, but I wasn’t prepared when I heard muffled voices outside the door. Feeling like I was six again, I strained to hear.

“We can’t just go in Audrey,”

“Why not. It’s our apartment,”

“Because _Arthur_ is in there and he deserves some measure of warning before-”

“Then go knock and have it over with,”

“I-”

“Damn it, Dale, so help me I will open that door and walk right in and leave you out here alone. He’s already listening. It doesn’t matter what you do,”

I breathed a silent laugh. Mothers always knew.

“How do you know that?”

“He’s our kid, Dale, trust me, I know,”

There was a paused, and I waited, holding my breath.

The knock resounded with an air of utter finality, like the door had always been waiting to feel the pressure of my Dad’s knuckles come rapping down.

I opened the door, and Mom swept in, embracing me before I had the chance to even catch a glimpse of Dale Cooper.

“Hi Baby,”

“Hey Mom,”

She kissed me on the cheek, one palm holding me in place so that I wouldn’t look and whispered in my ear _“He’s nervous,”_ before letting me go in an instant and waltzing into the kitchen, presumably to make more coffee.

I looked up, and for the first time since I could remember, I didn’t have to imagine him there in front of me.

His face was grim, and I knew instantly that this was not the same person from last night’s walk down memory lane. Whatever he’d been through had altered him. He watched warily, as if waiting for me to do something, like shut the door in his face.

I didn’t. We stood, staring at each other, regarding each other. He broke the silence first.

“May I come in?” He asked

“It’s your apartment,” I replied.

He took tentative first steps into the hall and I shut the door behind him, and left him standing there, looking around, while I joined Mom in the kitchen.

“Two cups Dale?” Mom called, as she measured the requisite three cups worth for the two of us.

“Yes, dear. Thank you,” His response was stunted, though automatic. Like a machine that had long been out of use. He sounded absent, lost in whatever thoughts held him captive.

Mom started the coffee and then looked at me hard in the eye. I looked back. She raised a brow. I gave her a skeptical glance in return, and she threw me back a patented “do as I say” unimpressed glare. The silent conversation over, I left the kitchen and entered Dad’s presence again.

He was still standing where I’d left him, looking at the pictures on the shelf across the room.

“They’re about the only thing that’s changed around here,” Startled by my voice, he looked up out of his reverie. “The pictures, I mean,”

“Yes,”

“Did you have a good flight?”

“We took the Bureau plane,”

“Director Cole have it stocked with his wine selection?”

“Yes, he did and I requisitioned us a bottle,” Mom was back, picking up the loose, dangling threads of our pathetic attempt at conversation. “It’s in the luggage. Dale, Arthur, go sit,”

I sat on the couch as directed and Dad took the black leather chair that Uncle Albert usually sat in when he was over.

Mom sat between us. Dad winced as he settled in, reminding me that Mom had said he’d been shot. By her.

“Stop fidgeting you’ll pull your stitches,” she admonished him.

“They itch, Audrey,” He complained in a very serious voice.

It was absolutely surreal.

“Suck it up,” She replied.

I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. “What a fucking mess,” I shook my head. “What an absolute fucking mess,” I stood and went into the kitchen, and when I came back out, five minutes later with three steaming cups of coffee, the look on Dad’s face hadn’t changed. He looked absolutely terrified. Of me.

I handed a cup off to mom, with cream and sugar the way she liked it, and set my own on the end table before handing the last one off to dad.

“It’s black, like you like it,”

“Thank you,” He was all deer in headlights, watching me for the slightest movement, and I felt worse than I had went Sheriff Truman caught his first glimpse of me.

“Oh this is just fucking ridiculous,” Mom put her cup down hard. “Dale, talk to your goddamned son. He doesn’t care what you say, just say something and get it over with or I’m going to go to the grocery store and lock the two of you in here for an hour by yourselves,”

We turned our gazes from her to each other, and without any hesitation, he finally spoke.

“Arthur, I’m sorry,”

“Can’t be sorry for something you didn’t mean to do, but okay, apology accepted,” He didn’t know what to make of me after that response, and mom hit me on the arm lightly and grumbled.

“I’m not playing referee. Arthur, you’re twenty five years old. Get a grip or I will,”

Dad’s gaze flickered between Mom and I, then, settled on me. He seemed to gather himself, and then started over. “Your Mom tells me that you’re an electrical engineer,”

“Yep,”

“What’s that like?” He did seem to genuinely want to know, so I told him about my job and where I worked and all the typical things that my Mom’s friends who hadn’t seen me since I graduated college wanted to know. It helped, putting him into that box. A guy wasn’t supposed to not know how to talk to his Dad. It was then that I realized that, despite everything, I’d had expectations. I’d expected that he’d somehow just know how to pick right back up, so that I wouldn’t have to, and I expected that somehow, he’s just reintegrate himself into our lives because I didn’t know how it could possibly work otherwise. There was no template for meeting a parent. Especially one who had been missing without a rational explanation as to why.

When I’d lost the ability to speak anymore about my work, and the conversation ended in a decisive nod, I’d determined that he was satisfied with my course of study and still absolutely clueless as to what was supposed to happen next. But I felt Mom’s stare at the back of my neck, and I decided to indulge.

“Dad,” he sucked in a breath shakily when I said it, and I realized that he’d never heard me call him that, except when I was babbling as a baby. “Sometimes things that are one become things that are two. Are the two one again?” I wasn’t even really sure what I was asking, but Mom’s words from eleven days previously about there being two of my Dad had brought Margaret Lanterman’s words back to the fore of my mind, even though I wasn’t in any way prepared to grapple with the implications.

He looked unsettled and his brow twitched down with a degree of seriousness that I’d never heard anyone ascribe to him before. “Yes. Yes they are. Who shared this with you?”

“Margaret Lanterman,”

“You’ve been to Twin Peaks?” There was a light in his eyes that had seemed absent before, and I understood why. He wanted to share with me his journey, he wanted to account for his absence, to atone for it in the only way he knew how. He needed to know that there was a way we could connect beyond the obvious (Mom).

“Yes. I went the summer after I graduated high school,”

“What did you think?”

“I was bored within the first three days,”

A real true emotion cross his face. “Bored. How? How could you have been bored in Twin Peaks?”

Here was a chance, a chance that we both had to take. He’d stepped first and now it was my turn. “Mom,” I turned to give her a playful glare, making certain that Dad could still see my expression. “made me promise not to go hiking. And a promise to Mom is a promise that can be kept, and if it can be kept, there’s no reason to break it,”

Dad looked at her, eyes soulful. “Audrey…”

“I didn’t want to lose Arthur too. I know it wasn’t rational, but...I couldn’t put aside what had happened to you, and what had happened to so many others over the years,”

A soft, sad smile crossed his face like the smallest glimpse of sun from behind a cloud. Weak, filtered through some unknown pain.

“I love you both very much,” He said with an earnestness that didn’t sound false, like the frequent descriptions of him given me had painted. “I don’t know if what happened could have been prevented. Perhaps put off... But I am still responsible for my actions. I have to be. I must hold myself accountable for everything-” Here he looked pointedly at my mother. “-that happened. Everything,” Mom looked like she was going to say something, but Dad held up his hand to stop her. “Audrey, please,” She nodded, reluctantly, and he continued. “Arthur I understand that you don’t...have an interest, per say, in understanding what’s happened, but there are things that I don’t know how to handle in any other way. I know that my absence in your life has affected it in a variety of ways, but not ones which you could perceive. My return will undoubtedly have a greater effect than my absence. I am not looking to make this the new normal, or anything of the kind. To whatever degree you desire my presence in your life, I will be here to fulfill it. At least that much I can now, promise, both to you and to your mother. And I know what such a promise means. If ever there comes a day when you desire answers, I will answer them. I cannot make up for lost time. That lesson...” He paused and a painful look passed over him. “That lesson I learned too late. Some things are meant to be, and we must deal with them as they are, and not as we wish to perceive them,” Dad spoke the words like a mantra, a reminder of some past failure. “In whatever capacity you’ll have me, Arthur, I’ll be here,”

We nodded at each other gravely and a deeper level of understanding passed between us in that moment that no words could capture. A weight lifted from him, and from me too, and we both relaxed from our tensed positions, easing into the still not quite settled emotion of the room. The tension was dissipated but some uncertainty remained, a familiar, learning uncertainty. Instead of his hands guiding mine as I took my first wobbling steps, we would take them together.

“Someday,” I began. “Someday I might be ready for those answers. But I’m not right now. I’m not like you, and Mom and Uncle Albert. There’s only so much I can fathom. I don’t need the answers to the universe. I’m content with my life as it is. Whatever more there is to life, I don’t need it. This is enough. It’s more than enough,”

“Okay,” I wasn’t sure if he was put off by what I said, or merely accepting.

“For right now, let’s just start small. You’re here, and Mom’s here, and I’m here. And I want to know you for you, not for who I’ve always been told you are. That’s enough for me, and I hope it can be enough for you too,”

Much to my shock, a tear coursed down his cheek.

“It’s more than I could have ever hoped for, Arthur,” He made no move to wipe it away. “Thank you,”

The day passed by like a dream, a dream I’d never quite been able to remember in the morning, shadowed and beyond description, the last shreds of a misty haze dazzled by sunlight. Everything I could never imagine was before me, my parents holding hands, smiling at eachother, talking with me, looking at photos. The surrealist landscape of a child’s dream brought to life for the man who could never envision it.

At the end of the day, I needed my space, and so did they, so I decided I would go home. Mom hugged me a bit more tightly than usual and asked me in an undertone to come back for breakfast the next day, 8 sharp, to which I replied that I would, and then she left me alone to say goodbye to Dad.

He was favouring his left side, where he’d been shot, and stretched out carefully as he stood, stiff from sitting so long.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

A contented smile broke across his face. “That you will,”

Again, what passed between us in looks was more than words could say, and a melancholy light filled his eyes, despite the happiness on his face, as I smiled back and walked into the hall, closing the door behind me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here ends my personal catharsis. I hope you all enjoyed.


End file.
